Post colonisation, the commonwealth had taken fragments of their conquests back home to the UK from all around the globe. Chicken tikka masala — the most-celebrated Indian influence on the British, had scaled to unprecedented heights in going on to become the national dish of the UK. While Bollywood and chicken tikka masala went on to colonise British taste buds, we had a Malayali taking over the reins in Asia and I’m not talking of Chandrettan who set up a tea stall in the moon, but the humble yet prominent global Malayali — the appam.
Appams had set sail from Kerala long before Malayalis started adopting Gulf as their territorial homeland extension. Appam, as we know it, is not to be limited merely as a breakfast staple in Kerala cuisine. Its reach to exotic destinations like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Sri Lanka has been phenomenal and something that every Malayali can be proud of. Appam is so rooted to the Malayali cause that it adopted a funky new name in every place it travelled to, with “Hoppers” being the whackiest and anglicised alias that could put all modern-day mallu Snoop-dogg wannabes to shame.
Kerala cuisine has many ambassadors today, however, only a handful of them could create an impact to attain mass appeal and celebrity stature in their domain. Chefs from Kerala have now forayed into carving a niche of their own, world over by plating gastronomic wonders to entice the palates of more than just the Malayali diaspora. Be it celebrity chefs like Sapna Anand who has written cookbooks and created her own brand of spices in Malaysia or Thomas Zacharias, who has an immense social media following owing to his stupendous work at the Bombay Canteen, all of them have been flag-bearers in their own respects and in turn endorsing the “brand Kerala”. The success of gourmet burger places and authentic Italian restaurants in Kerala fortifies the fact that there is space for an authentic French Patisserie, a greek taverna or a spanish tapas bar but the quintessential question is, Are we ready yet?
The author is a food writer and author of the book Soul Fried Monologues
